Joe Jacoby's bachelor party, and other Hogs tales

(1983 AP photo)

Joe Jacoby and Jeff Bostic spent 24 minutes talking with Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin during a recent episode of ESPN 980's Sports Reporters. If you lived through the first Gibbs era as a Redskins fan, you're gonna want to go listen. It was brilliant radio. To send you off into the holiday weekend, I'll provide several of the best moments. But it was all the best.

Jacoby's Bachelor Party

Bostic: You should have seen [Russ Grimm and Jacoby] at Jake's bachelor party.

Jacoby: Careful. Careful. Careful. Careful.

Bostic: I saw the unthinkable. I was coming back from reconstructive knee surgery, and I went to Jake's bachelor's party. And Jake went a little nuts, ok? Jake was going cuckoo, cuckoo. And Russ was the guy that had the rooms in his name, somewhere around Tysons. And I saw the unthinkable. I actually saw Russ Grimm Fireman Carrying Jacoby. I mean, I was impressed. Oh yeah. It was impressive. Me with my knee, hey, I was doing Michael Jackson's moonwalk. I was like get away from these boys, this is serious, because they've just taken a 330-pound man and basically carried him

Jacoby: I was only 305 then.

50 Gut

Pollin: Let's talk about the Cowboys games, because as legend has it, to close out the NFC championship game, kill the clock, you ran 50 Gut, or 70 Chip....

Jacoby/Bostic: We ran 50 gut nine times.

Czaban: Nine times? In a row?

Jacoby: And we told 'em. They were told.

Bostic: They were told the last seven times. I told Randy White. You know, I love Russ, and 50 Gut, big Jake's on Harvey Martin, and Randy White's on Russ, and the two of us are double teaming him to the linebacker. And the first time we're in the huddle, Trips Left, 50 Gut on white. Trips Left, Fake [something], 50 Gut on white. Third time, Spread Left, 50 Gut on white. I was like, man, there's a theme here. Were we arrogant Jake? Were we arrogant?

Jacoby: At that moment, yes, we got arrogant.

Bostic: Anyway, I had to speak to Randy White before the play started the third time. And I told him, I said 'Our coaching staff loves you, they're running over you again.' And then the fourth time I said, 'Hey, they called your number again! They called it again!'

Jacoby: And the interesting thing about that, after we kept running through about six or seven of them, there was nothing they could do to stop it. Their defensive line coach was Ernie Stautner, God rest his soul. Well, he's on their sideline, we're close to their sideline, he's on his knees yelling and screaming at them to dig in. Those are the great memories that I have of it. We're lining up, and it's coming again guys, and they couldn't do anything.

Trash Talking

Pollin: [Mark] May used to like to talk to Randy White, right, and that wasn't too cool with you guys?

Jacoby: Well, it didn't bother Jeff and I. it was more bothering Russ, because Russ had to go against Randy. There were some heated words exchanged during the huddle between Russ and Mark. And Mark had some nice comments about Randy's family and everything like that.

Bostic: His wife, his daughter.

Jacoby: And Russ basically said, I know you've got a stiff over there, but you keep it up, and I'm coming after your ass.

Bostic: And believe me, Don Smerek and John Dutton, they were both stiffs. May had a stiff. But Randy White was not a stiff.

The 1982 Super Bowl

Jacoby: That winning check for winning that Super Bowl was $36 grand. [My salary was] 23. That was half [because of the strike].

Bostic: In the playoff run when we made 70 grand for winning the Super Bowl, half of my salary was 25. So if they told me, Russ and Jake, 'You know what guys, in four weeks you could make 70 thousand,' we would have thrown our mothers under a train and run over them, ok?

Jacoby: I think Russ said that.

Czaban: How do you think the NFL would be now if the winner of the Super Bowl, using today's dollars, the players would get an average of $3 million a piece.

Bostic: Somebody would die. I would watch it. I'm gonna watch it anyway....Let me ask this to Jake, because I've never asked him this. I know what I was playing for. Were you playing for money or were you playing for jewelry?

Jacoby: Money. The money, after going through eight weeks of a strike.

Bostic: C'mon, you're lying.

Driving Home

Bostic: I got to give you a great Jacoby-Grimm story. They picked my ass up in Georgetown, and they were like in their first or second years, and I loved them because this guy he was so big, I mean, he could block out the sun. And we're driving back from Georgetown, and as is the custom in late Novermber, early December, it's snowing. And Russ had a Jeep Wrangler. So imagine Jake in the front of this Jeep Wrangler, two-door, not four-door. They didn't have those then. And I looked like a pretzel smashed up in the back of this thing. And if you remember the old Dulles Toll Road, you used to have to got the airport and turn around.

Jacoby: We never saw the turnaround.

Bostic: We never saw the turnaround. So we went across the median, and it's snowing, and we got to the top of the hill. And there's this Fairfax County guy that had these lights that were red.

Jacoby: They were pretty blue.

Bostic: And we talked to him for a while and we talked him out of this thing. It was really a great bonding experience.

The 5 O'Clock Club

Jacoby: It's no different than us sitting here now. We were just in a shed, guys sitting around talking, and having a few cold adult beverages.

Bostic: Trust me, we solved a lot of world problems. And if you know the old Redskins Park, there was a building, bless that building. It had no heat, it had no electricity, but it had us.

Jacoby: Well, we had heat. It was an old kerosene heater.

Bostic: It was an old kerosene heater, and we bought this thing because it was freezing out there in November. And if you've ever run a kerosene heater, you know that one thing's gonna happen after you run it for a couple hours. The smut. You've got to burn the smut off it first. So I go home and I'm like picking the black out of my nose. But the 5 O'Clock Club, trust me, that was as big a part of our success....

Jacoby: It's true. Everybody talks about the 5 O'Clock Club. Yes, there were guys out there having their cold beer, but there were also guys out there just to be out there. A lot of guys came out there to get things off their chest, let things air out.

Bostic: Who was the El Presidente? Riggins was the president. But it was mostly the Hogs, and we loved John.

Czaban: Did Theismann ever make a visit?

Bostic: Not allowed in.

Jacoby: He tried. He tried to come in.

Czaban: All right, Moseley?

Bostic: No no no no no no.

Jacoby: We're talking athletes.

Bostic: Dave Butz was an outsider that we let in. Darryl Grant was a guy that came in there a couple times. But it was mostly our offensive line.

Czaban: What if one day Art Monk said 'Hey fellas, I'd like to come out.'

Bostic: We would all have a heart attack.

(This, by the way, is why I've already got August 7, Canton, Ohio on my schedule.)

Ah, the good old days. Those games were rough and Randy White stood out as the dirtiest Cowgirl. He loved to see a down and out Redskin to pile drive into the ground, especially if it was Theismann and they never would flag him for it. But when Mark May would destroy a cowgirl a little late, the flags couldn't get out fast enough.